Who Let Him Play Yu-Gi-Oh! novel Chapter 2

Chapter 2 - 2: The Starting Deck

Kira logged into both the Kaiba Corporation and International Illusion Society's card search websites to browse the card pools currently available for direct purchase on the market.

First and foremost, there was the card that any duelist who transmigrated here, as long as they were remotely smart, would undoubtedly search for—

—Pot of Greed.

Or rather, the early anime-exclusive, overpowered draw engines represented by Pot of Greed.

Pot of Greed allows you to draw two cards from your deck unconditionally. This simple and crude effect is exactly why it has been a forever banned card in the real-world card game, with virtually no hope of ever being unbanned in anyone's lifetime.

Its partner in crime is Graceful Charity, which not only lets you draw three cards but also lets you discard two cards from your hand to the graveyard. As Yu-Gi-Oh! evolved into an era where graveyard and hand resources are nearly interchangeable, this draw-three and self-mill combo became even scarier than Pot of Greed.

However, in the DM anime, duelists didn't pay much attention to these cards; by the GX era, duelists in the anime world had started to realize their power. After all, in the GX anime, you'd see every main character with at least one Pot of Greed and one Graceful Charity. In heroine Asuka's duels, you'd even witness Pot of Greed drawing into another Pot of Greed—a truly savage sight.

When it came to monster cards, Kira started suffering from some choice paralysis.

That's because, after looking through the entire card pool, he couldn't find a single card he liked. As a transmigrated card game veteran, he really couldn't bring himself to use those monsters that required honest tribute summoning, only to end up with a vanilla monster with just over 2000 ATK.

There were some relatively good monsters, but many were simply unavailable for purchase, no matter the price.

For example, the first card that came to mind was Jinzo—one of the signature monsters of Jounouchi Katsuya from the previous protagonist group. It's a Level 6 monster, only requires one tribute, has a respectable 2400 ATK, and features the early-game overpowered trap lock ability—no trap cards can be activated while he's on the field.

Kira remembered that in the real card game environment of this era, Jinzo was also a very strong single card, a staple in top-tier decks.

But upon searching, he found it was out of stock.

Jinzo is an extremely rare card and has been out of stock for a long time—simply unavailable.

This left Kira a bit frustrated. He quickly realized that another major difference between the anime world and the real card game was the difficulty of obtaining cards.

In the real world, you could always check the current card pool and use almost any card to build any deck you wanted. But duelists in the Yu-Gi-Oh! world doesn't have that luxury.

There were also some cards he wanted, but after glancing at their prices, he couldn't help but gasp.

Forget it.

Kira knew perfectly well that in this world, cards equaled weapons and strength, so he was already prepared to go broke to get the necessary cards no matter the cost.

But even with that determination, looking at the sky-high prices of some rare cards, he figured even selling himself wouldn't be enough to afford them.

He wasn't exaggerating—he meant it literally.

Sure enough, the price gap between normal cards and rare cards was ridiculous in this world. Regular cards and booster packs were about the same price as in his previous life—affordable for everyone. But some rare cards were worth as much as a house for a single card.

And those were just the rare cards you could buy. The Blue-Eyes White Dragon—with only three copies worldwide, all owned by Seto Kaiba—was simply out of the question.

Further research revealed that, besides car and home loans, this world even had something called a card loan. As the name suggests, you could take out a loan to buy cards.

"So this is how painful it feels to be cardless," Kira muttered.

Fortunately, even with these restrictions, he was able to barely come up with a deck-building concept using cards he could get.

The prototype for this deck was none other than a milestone in the history of competitive Yu-Gi-Oh!—the world's very first World Championship-winning deck.

Hand Destruction.

Perhaps every new duelist who got into the game through the anime had unrealistic fantasies about dueling, like epic battles between high-ATK bosses, intense attack and defense exchanges, and a climactic GG in a thrilling fight.

But that's the fake Yu-Gi-Oh!

The real Yu-Gi-Oh! is: at this table, only one person is getting to play.